Teens born with HIV not telling partners

(WASHINGTON TIMES) A significant number of sexually active U.S. teens who were born with HIV either didn’t know their own status when they started having sex, or they knew it but didn’t disclose it to their first sex partners, a new study says.

These findings underscore the need for counseling on sex practices to youth who have been living with HIV since birth, said the study, which appears in the Dec. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

It is “extremely important for health-care providers, school counselors and family members to reinforce the importance of practicing safe sex, taking medication regularly and disclosing HIV status to potential partners,” said Dr. Rohan Hazra, study co-author and researcher at the pediatric, adolescent and maternal AIDS branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.